Capital Limited

Capital Limited

125.00
GBX
-0.50
(-0.40%)
23.54BMarket Cap
Mar 18Next Earn

Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 29, 2026

Jamie Boyton

Good morning, and thank you for the introduction, and thank you, everyone, for dialing in today. I've got Ryan Tennis with me on the call, and he'll be managing the Q&A session a little later.

He's head of our IR based in London. I'm dialing in today from Hong Kong.

Obviously, the purpose of the call is to run through the first quarter trading update, which we released a little over a week ago on the 21st of April, and was a record quarter for the group. We'll spend about 10 to 15 minutes going through the slide deck, and then we'll move into a Q&A session.

I'll kick off. Just taking you directly to slide 3, again, for those that of you that are new to Capital on today's call, we have three operating businesses, specifically Capital Drilling, Capital Mining, and MSA Labs.

The drilling business is the longest established, the original business of Capital from 2005. We operate a fleet of about 137 rigs across Africa, the Middle East, and North America, with a full range of drilling services from exploration through to production.

Capital Mining, a more recent initiative, we started the mining business in 2019. We moved that into a scale operation in 2020.

That offers load and haul services predominantly, and we're currently operating two contracts, one in Egypt and one in Pakistan. The third operating business is MSA Labs, which operates a network of laboratories across Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, 33 laboratories at last count, very high-growth business, and that business has been with us now for about 5 or 6 years as well.

Broadly speaking, you're looking at revenue splits between the three operating businesses where about 60% comes from our drilling business, which is quite steady growth, our mining business represents currently about 20% of our revenue, and MSA Labs is a further 20% of our revenue. Then we also have the the investment arm, Capital DI, which has been particularly successful utilizing our our distribution network and our network on the ground, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, to identify early-stage opportunities.

We've had some fantastic success with that business. Then to round out the portfolio, we have Capital Innovation.

Capital Innovation is is our internal arm that is is scoped with identifying, testing, and commercializing new technology and and bringing it onto our platform. We've had a number of success stories there, most prominent with MSA Labs and the PhotonAssay technology.

We're a premium provider to the mining industry. We we pride ourselves on our modern fleet, we we we very proud of the investment that we make in our assets, the highest of quality assets.

We have a demonstrable track record of renewals. Typically, contract durations for our drilling business, by way of example, range between 3 and 5 years, and there are a number of sites where we've now been operating for 20 years plus.

We have industry-leading health and safety standards. This premium offering that we provide to the mining industry is reflected in the client base that we've attracted to to our to our business, with some of the biggest gold mining and and mining companies in general in the world utilizing our services.

Map of our established operations, the business started life in Africa, has expanded into into the Middle East, and in more recent times into the into the Americas. I won't speak to all the numbers, but it's a it's a broad footprint.

In terms of revenue split, you're talking 80% to 85% coming out of Africa and the Middle East, while our Americas operation is is a lot newer in its growth trajectory. Talking to the revenues, couple of couple of things to bring out.

We released our first quarter numbers on the 21st, as I said in the introduction. Our headline revenue was $101.7 million, which is up 42% on the first quarter of last year.

We had $62.8 million coming from our drilling business, which showed 9% growth. We had $18 million coming out of our mining business, which was off almost a negligible base, shall we say, in the first quarter of last year.

Our laboratory business generated revenue of $20.9 million, which is up 55% on the first quarter of last year. Across all units, all operating businesses, it was an outstanding performance.

Obviously, 2025, the top right chart just draw your attention to, that was a was a transition year impacted by the cessation of two of our mining contracts in the fourth quarter of 2024. Now, we started the first, redeployed that equipment and started the first of our current two mining contracts in the second quarter of last year.

As you can see in the bottom right, as that mining revenue came back into our business, we we we resumed growth. More recently, we started our second mining contract at the Sukari gold mine.

It's the second time we've been contracted there. We worked there from, call it January 2021 through to 2024, and now we've just been recontracted to do another waste-stripping operation.

Those two contracts kicking in, along with the growth particularly in the lab business, has driven a record first quarter of revenue for the company. Top right, you can see our revenue guidance, which I'll go into in the outlook statement, but after a flat year of revenue in 2025, we're back on a very strong growth trajectory in 2026.

Following on from that is obviously we're getting an inflection in the group's operating margins and an inflection in the group's return on capital. Obviously, the mining equipment is a fairly substantive capital base, to get that back in the field and generating revenue and returns is obviously having a big impact there.

Certainly again, I'll cover more in the outlook statement, we're we're back on a very positive trajectory, and the first quarter was very pleasing for for for our performance. A little more on the the Capital DI, which is our mining venture capital fund.

The portfolio as at the 31st of March was was was down marginally on the 31st of December 2025, impacted, as as were all equity portfolios, by the activities in the Middle East. The portfolio itself has had an outstanding performance.

It's generated a cumulative return of over 60% since we commenced its investing activity back in 2019. We've been very successful in identifying, through our networks and our operating capability, a number of early-stage opportunities that are going through the development path with with mines to be developed in the future.

I think it's it's actually a pretty outstanding success rate in terms of identifying the right assets that have got the potential to turn into substantive, long-life gold mines. A slide on the on the macro.

Obviously, extremely supportive conditions in the markets in which we operate. The principal commodities exposure for Capital is gold, followed by copper.

Obviously, I think everyone's acutely aware of what the gold price has how it's performed over the last 18 months or so. Bottom left is very important for us because there's been an absolute surge in the level of capital markets activity, which brings a lot of demand to the service providers.

That capital markets activity tends to be concentrated in the in the smaller cap and the mid-tiers, but what that does do, just to the broad demand profile of the industry, it it it really drives demand for laboratory services and drilling services in particular. Top right, we've obviously had this slide in our packs before, is talking to the market conditions.

I think the point that we always reference is that if you look back at the last cycle peak, it was 2012. That's quite a quite a long time between drinks, to speak.

It's 14 years now. We still haven't seen the spending levels get get back to those levels, despite gold trading at historic highs, despite capital market activity being at historic highs, particularly on the ASX.

Again, they're highly supportive indicators for the demand profile. Again, I'll cover in the outlook, but certainly we we think we've got a number of very strong years of demand ahead of us.

Here we just highlight Capital's valuation gap against our peers. On a blended basis, we're we're trading with our investment portfolio about 2.8 times EV to EBITDA based on consensus for FY 2026.

You can see that places us at a discount against our drilling peers, our mining peers, and most substantially against our lab peers. The lab companies themselves trade at quite quite distinctly different margins to the drilling peers and mining peers, predominantly because they are lighter, capital-lighter businesses.

What was particularly pleasing about our MSA Labs is incredibly strong revenue growth in 2025, which drove the inflection for the business from the investment cycle and loss-making investment cycle into profitability in the second half. This year, I'm expecting continued growth in that business and continued profitability in that business.

We're certainly hopeful that that will start to reflect in in our sum-of-the-parts valuation. Guidance and outlook.

This is reiterating previous guidance, where group revenue of between $410 and $440 million. The first quarter results put us on track with that.

The MSA Labs we've guided $85 to $95 million, which is up from I think about 73 last year, and our CapEx number is $55 to $65 million. We have announced a number of multiple, significant, long-term, high-quality contracts, keeping with the thematic of the business looking for long-term contracts with Tier 1 or Tier 2 plus assets.

We've made announcements across all of our operating businesses, including 5-year grade control drilling contract at the Koné mine in Ivory Coast with Montage, a laboratory contract also with Montage at the Koné mine in Ivory Coast. We've announced a new lab build at Newfoundland, underpinned by Equinox in in Canada, and that that has actually now started receiving samples.

Then on the mining side, we announced the the contract I previously referenced, a a second waste mining contract with AngloGold Ashanti at the Sukari gold mine in Egypt. We're we're seeing demand as strong as we have seen it in the past decade, inquiries across all of our business units, and starting to see, as a result of that, some rate increases coming into the market as as what has been a somewhat oversupplied market in the last few years.

That that demand is really taking up that that that supply, and I think we're moving into a supply-constrained market. Just to remind people, when we raised capital late last year, the premise of that was that we saw a very strong pipeline ahead of us, and we saw that this would become a a a supply-constrained market, and we took action to really give us ourselves the the capacity to purchase equipment to to to manage this demand that we've started to actually see come through in our in our announcements.

I just draw your attention to this chart. I find it's particularly interesting with reference to the previous cycle boom, which is, as I said, with the peak or the or the the concluding years of the previous cycle, 2011-12.

You can see the previous peak, the sector that we face, the mining sector, was still

Operator

Sorry, Jamie, you've just frozen there. Let me just take down your camera.

Jamie Boyton

...showed is there is just the amount of free cash flow, which is unprecedented in this sector. Our clients are experiencing absolute record operating margins, record cash flows, and we are starting to see the impact of that come through significant increases in their budgets, significant increases in tendering activity.

As I alluded to earlier, we feel very confident about the outlook for the next few years based on this demand profile. The investment case, it's an integrated business model.

We supply the full range of services, so, our model is to establish ourselves with a beachhead at an operating mine site and deliver multiple services to that customer. It's a Tier 1 client portfolio.

We've got a very strong history of generating above-sector returns and margins, and as I showed in that slide earlier, we're moving back into that phase of our growth profile, certainly strategically positioned across the mining cycle with early-stage exposure right through to production, and as per the earlier slide, looking at us against our peers, significant valuation upside on a peer-comp basis. It's on that basis, I'll hand over to Ryan for the Q&A.

Ryan Tennis

Thanks, Jamie. We've had a few questions from some viewers.

Could you please provide some commentary on the impact of higher fuel prices that we are experiencing?

Jamie Boyton

It's negligible for us. Fuel as a percentage of revenue is less than 1%.

In almost the very high majority of our contracts, they are on a basis that the client is paying for the fuel. We're seeing very little impact on our profitability by fuel.

We did see a small increase in our travel costs, as you would expect. There's been a lot of rerouting of travel for our workforce in recent times.

That has seen a small increase, but again, they're pretty insignificant and certainly not impacting the earnings profile.

Ryan Tennis

Thanks.

Jamie Boyton

Sorry, my computer has just gone a bit funny on me, but hopefully I'm coming back.

Operator

We can still hear you, Jamie.

Jamie Boyton

Very good. Then,

Ryan Tennis

Jamie, can you please provide some commentary around our operations at Reko Diq?

Jamie Boyton

Obviously there's been a lot of press of late around the Barrick's position on Reko. We've been operating that mining contract now since the second quarter of last year.

We also carry out water bore activities as well as some exploration drilling. We've had no impact on our performance versus our tender and our budget.

It is performing in line, well in line with our expectations. There are security protocols in place that have had some impact, but insignificant impact to some of the activities.

Post our initial contract award and announcement, we announced a variation where we actually saw an increase in our scope. Overall, our contract is, based on what we initially executed, looking to be a bit larger than we initially anticipated.

However, that would probably reflect itself, if anything, in an extension or a longer time period as opposed to a larger value on a month-by-month basis. As I said earlier, the contract is performing in line with our tender and our budgets.

Ryan Tennis

Thanks. Then

Jamie Boyton

a

Ryan Tennis

question on the investments. What is the EV/EBITDA when stripping out the investment portfolio?

Secondly, is there a plan to hold these investments long term, or do you see some realization?

Jamie Boyton

Let me answer the second Or actually, Ryan, why don't you answer the first one? What is it?

Ryan Tennis

It's 3.7 times.

Jamie Boyton

3.7 times. Thank you.

In terms of the strategy around the investments, we're typically earlier stage than most other resource investors and resource funds in particular. By virtue of the network that we've got on the ground, and particularly with the geologist network we've got, we have an edge, I would say, in identifying these opportunities early.

In terms of the profile, it's a very concentrated portfolio. The way we tend to invest is identify opportunities that we think are interesting.

They typically are quite small entry points when we first get exposed, and then as the results start to come through, we understand the geology better and decide at that point do we scale up or do we exit. That's resulted in quite a concentrated portfolio.

The book that we have now is dominated by WIA and Amani. In the case of WIA, it's going through DFS stage, and we will continue to support the company.

That's going to be a very low-cost, long-life mine. In the case of Amani, look, we're optimistic that there's going to be a substantive increase in their resource base.

I think it's got the potential, it's demonstrating the potential that it could be another gold mine there. At the moment, our stance at the moment is to hold these positions, and because we think there's substantial upside in them.

Ryan Tennis

Thanks, Jamie. That is all the questions we have today.

Thank you all for attending.

Operator

That's great, Jamie, Ryan. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today.

Could I please ask investors not to close the session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.

Ryan Tennis

Thank you.